


A Shallow Little World

by Mithrigil



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Horror, Let's Play a Game, Multi, Prequel, Spoilers, Start Of Darkness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Mastermind beta-tests the School Life of Mutual Killing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> How do I spoil thee? Let me count the ways. One, Two, Zero...
> 
>  
> 
> Also, future chapters will contain violence above and beyond the call of canon.
> 
> Still here? Let's play a game...

According to the guide on Hotaru’s phone, the Hope’s Peak Student Council meets at 4 PM sharp every Monday and Friday, in its designated room on the fifth floor. It leaves Hotaru no time for after-school laps on either day, but considering how much running time she’s putting in with the researchers during school hours, it’s not that big a deal to go to the meetings instead.

She takes the stairs anyway, though. _Race the Elevator_ is always a fun game to play.

Her feet pound up the steps, around the rails, until she’s flying around the corners and up, up, up, all five flights. She bursts through the door to the fifth floor just as the elevator dings beside her, and skids to a stop to check just which room is the correct one.

“It’s this way,” the elevator’s passenger says, flourishing her hand toward the northmost double-doors. The rings on her fingers clink and gleam, some silver, some gold, sometimes three or four to a finger but none of them with stones. She has dark hair pulled up into a twist and smoky eye-makeup that matches her hair almost exactly. “You must be Hara-kun.”

“I am, thank you!” Hotaru bows and introduces herself properly. “I’m Hara Hotaru, Super High School Level Sprinter. Nice to meet you! Please look kindly upon me.”

“A sprinter, huh? That explains why you aren’t out of breath.” Coming from anyone else, it would sound like an easy compliment, but the way she speaks makes it difficult to tell if it’s sarcastic or not. “You’re filling in for Ishimaru-kun, correct?”

“Yes, thank you. I’ve got the doctor’s note here--” It’s in her pocket, right at the front, only a little creased, and she holds it forward, “--and he says that Ishimaru-kun should be back in a month. And I’ve got Oowada-kun’s formal apology too if you want it, but that’s just on my phone.”

“That won’t be necessary.” The girl with the rings pinches the paper between her fingers and doesn’t bother reading it. Oh, it might be a little sweaty. Whoops. But even if she doesn’t acknowledge the note beyond a little curl of disdain in her lips, she goes on and introduces herself. “I’m Watabe Kinoko. Treasurer.”

“Nice to meet you, Watabe-san!”

“You already said that.”

“Oh, I guess I did, thank you.” When Watabe leads Hotaru through the double doors, they’re about to swing into her face, but Hotaru dodges like it’s nothing, which it is.

Even if everything about Hope’s Peak is pretty strange, the Student Council room is one of the stranger rooms that Hotaru’s seen so far. There aren’t any chairs or desks, just a ring of sixteen lecterns in the center. Watabe heads to one lectern and drapes her purse over the side, then plugs a tablet into the lectern and taps her fingernails on the screen.

“So, where does Ishimaru-kun usually sit? Er, stand?” Hotaru asks.

Watabe waves at the lectern directly across from hers, so Hotaru heads there. “For the record, no one sits in here,” Watabe says. “Our fearless leader thinks it improves morale.”

“Got it, thank you!”

“What’s Ishimaru-kun’s deal anyway?”

“Well, I don’t know much about it, since I’m in 1-A, not 1-B. But it’s all in the note. He and Oowada-kun, you know, the gang leader? They were having a drinking contest or something and Ishimaru got hit in the head with a can of Bawls. And the substitute Freshman Representative, Enoshima-kun, said that I should come instead because she has a photoshoot in Timbuktu.”

“Really.”

Hotaru nods. “So I’ll be filling in, that’s all. Please look kindly up--”

“You already said that too.”

“Right, thank you.” Well, since she seems to be annoying Watabe so much, Hotaru checks the clock on her phone. “Oh, it’s already 3:59. Where is everyone?”

“Not everyone’s as prompt as we are.” Watabe rolls her eyes and sighs, then checks out her rings and her manicure. “Some are even prompter. Incoming in five, four, three, two--”

“Afternoon, ladies!” A striking and attractive young Korean man with spiky bleached hair bursts through the doors with a spring in his step.

“--one,” Watabe finishes, stroking the edge of her tablet. “You just saw us an hour ago, Pak-san.”

“Not both of you!” He bounds over to Hotaru and bows perfectly. “You must be Hara Hotaru-chan, Ishimaru-kun’s substitute. It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Pak Shindong. Pleased to make your acquaintance!”

“You speak such beautiful Japanese,” Hotaru says, stunned.

He beams. “I know, right?”

“Great,” Watabe says by the tablet, “now we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“That’s because there’s no end to it, Kinoko-chan!” He whirls out of Hotaru’s space to his own lectern two places down and perches on the edge, leans in backward over the center of the circle. “I’m here to stay!”

“You’ll graduate with the rest of us.”

“Well yes, but a Super High School Level Immigrant is nothing if not inexorable!” He winks at Watabe, who ignores him, then at Hotaru instead. “She’s right, though. This is my last year as Student Council Secretary. But it’s definitely improved my grasp on the language, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” a newcomer says from the doorway, more brusque in his tone than even Watabe. “Now if only we could get you to shut up.”

Pak gives the newcomer an authentically obscene Japanese gesture. “Great bedside manner as ever, Taro-kun.”

Hotaru already knows Ono Taro, Super High School Level Orthopedist, by reputation if not by face: one of her parents’ conditions for her attending Hope’s Peak was that the sports medicine program be enough to keep up with her. The Super High School Level Coach and Chiropractor graduated last year, unfortunately, but Ono being at the school was enough for Hotaru’s parents to seal the deal. She hasn’t had to avail herself of Ono’s skill yet, and for a moment she’s thankful. Ono has a pinched, sour face that’s at odds with his rounded frame, and is still wearing scrubs and a lab coat with faint brown stains at the wrist.

“There’s no need for bedside manner. I’m not at work.” He slides into his lectern and doesn’t introduce himself to Hotaru at all. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Sure,” Watabe says, “let’s just start without everyone else. That should make this go at least twice as fast.”

“Seconded,” another girl says from the doorway. “I’ve got irons in the fire. Literally.”

“We _all_ have work, Kikuchi-chan,” Pak says. “This just counts as work, that’s all.”

Kikuchi’s place turns out to be directly to Hotaru’s left. She stands there, and wipes some ash off her hands on the front of her artist’s apron, which is longer than her school skirt, which is considerably shorter than regulation. Hotaru can’t help staring at Kikuchi’s legs for a moment: they’re as powerful as her arms and chest, and Hotaru thinks for a moment that Kikuchi would make a great triathlete or even decathlete.

“You’re staring,” Kikuchi says.

“Oh! Um! Sorry, thank you. I’m Hara Hotaru, the substitute Freshman Representative filling in for--”

“Not this again,” Watabe drones.

“Oh,” Kikuchi says, so Hotaru doesn’t have to continue. “Fine. I’m Kikuchi Risa, Super High School Level Blacksmith.” She crosses her arms and leans her hip into the lectern, and doesn’t say anything more after that, so Hotaru turns back to the rest of the circle and listens to Ono and Pak needle each other for a while.

It’s 4:03 already. Hotaru thought that the Hope’s Peak Student Council would be much more punctual than this. Well, it can’t be helped! Seniors must be so busy--

Someone--Pak, Hotaru thinks--yells, “Duck!”, and Hotaru hits the floor just in time to dodge a bullet.

Literally.

And a hail of arrows, also literally. The arrows thud into the lecterns across the circle and thrum like springs, three in a row, then four.

“Watch where you’re aiming, asshole!” Ono screams.

“I can’t help it if she’s a moving target!” a man yells back. Another bullet cracks through the air and Hotaru covers her head and cowers behind the lectern.

“You mean you can’t help it if you _suck!_ ” A girl laughs, a full-on ojousama laugh, and another shot rings out. “You couldn’t hit the broad side of a parked truck!”

“Funny, I thought I tapped your ass last night, and it’s at least that big.”

The shriek from the other side of the room is punctuated by a burst of gunfire. Arrows hiss through the air and explode on contact, and Hotaru clutches her phone and ducks for dear life--

“For god’s sake you two, cut it out!”

The gunshots stop, and no more arrows fly, and the only sounds in the room are eight echoes of heavy breath and one plank of belatedly splintering wood. Hotaru peeks out from behind the lectern and gapes at the gorgeous lady in the center of the lectern ring. She stands there, unruffled--well, her dress and her socks and the brim of her hat are ruffled, but her composure isn’t--and she taps a white lace fan against her palm like a deadly weapon.

“Sawada-kun,” she says, just as firm as before even at half the volume, “Oniniwa-chan, please, keep it to the dojo. If you don’t cease this wanton destruction right now, I’ll leave it up to the _researchers_ to deal with you.”

No one responds.

“Sawada-kun?” the lady asks, looking around the circle. “Oniniwa-chan?”

Oh. That heavy breathing in the corner wasn’t from--well, Hotaru guesses it _counts_ as exertion. A girl with long twintails and a sniper’s headset has a young man twice her size shoved against the wall, and, um, they’re enjoying themselves at least as much as they were when they were shooting at each other.

The lady in the center of the circle clears her throat loudly.

They stop making out.

“Please,” Watabe says, waving the tablet at them, “go on. Let me just get a better angle to record this for posterity.”

“Kinky,” Sawada says, like he approves, but Oniniwa elbows him in the gut. He laughs, and runs a hand through his hair, then picks up his bow and slings it over his shoulder--but not before poking Oniniwa in the behind with it. She whirls around and punches him in the chest, he grabs her wrist, they start tussling back toward the wall--and then the lace fan, deftly thrown, hits Sawada in the head.

“I mean it,” the lady in the circle says. “No one wants the researchers in here, now, _do they?_ ”

“No, we don’t,” Oniniwa says. She yanks on Sawada’s long ponytail and heads to her place in the circle, rifle over her shoulder. Sawada puts up his hands in good-natured surrender and smirks at her from his place two lecterns down. But after Oniniwa returns that smirk, she notices Hotaru across the circle. “Who are you?”

Hotaru waves. “I’m Hara Hotaru, the substitute--”

“Save it.” Watabe turns to Oniniwa and says, instead, “She’s the temporary Ishimaru.”

“Great,” Oniniwa says. “Oniniwa Hazuki. That jerk over there is Sawada Mitsuo.”

Sawada fans himself with the lady’s lace fan and gives Hotaru a quick polite bow. “Nice to meet you, Hara-chan.”

The lady, whose lectern is to the left of Sawada’s, clears her throat and extends her hand. Sawada places the fan in it, and the Lady snaps it out, hides a corner of her face behind it, the very picture of Elegant Gothic Aristocrat humility. “Thank you. Pleasant to meet you as well, Hara-chan. I am Nakagawa Setsuka, in charge of publicity for the Student Council. Since you’re filling in for Ishimaru-kun, please don’t hesitate to ask anyone for help.”

“That’s great, thank you!”

“Anyone but me,” someone says quietly but morosely, one lectern down.

Hotaru turns to her and smiles--and then fights to keep the smile up, because the aura of doom and gloom around this girl is so thick it’s almost visible.

“Hi,” Hotaru says anyway, “I’m Hara--”

_”We know,”_ at least three people in the circle say, Watabe the loudest among them.

“It’s more efficient to say it once when everyone’s here,” the gloomy girl says. Her hair is pinned back with little clips shaped like a biohazard warning. Hotaru winces.

“I guess,” Hotaru says. “Thank you. But, um, your name?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It’s Shibata Mariko,” Nakagawa says. “She’s far too modest.”

Shibata glances away, toward the doors. “Everyone’s modest compared to you.”

Insult or not, Nakagawa takes it in stride and laughs into her fan. “Well, compared to me and Pak-kun, would you not say?”

Everyone laughs, which just makes Shibata look even more sullen, like she’d wrap herself in the lectern if she could.

“It’s true, it’s true!” Pak cheers, and sits on the rail of his lectern again. “Guess I’ll have to work on True Japanese Modesty next, now that I’ve picked the language up.”

“It’s doomed to failure,” Shibata says.

“Not for me!”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Well, I think you can do anything you put your mind to,” Hotaru says.

“You must be new.”

“Duh,” someone trills from the doorway. “Only a freshman can sub in for a Freshman Rep.”

Hotaru turns to the door to look at her. Now, she’s seen some ugly people at Hope’s Peak, and a lot of very attractive people (since talent and deportment seem to go together). But she’s never seen someone as bland and average-looking as this girl in her entire life, not even in the Reserve Department or in the faceless masses at the crosswalks. Her haircut is plain, her face is plain, her uniform is unembellished, even her posture is plain. Only her voice seems remarkable at all--and remarkably familiar.

“I take it you don’t want her to introduce herself,” Ono says.

“Don’t need her to, I could hear from down the hall,” the plain girl says--and then, in perfect imitation, _“Hi, thank you! I’m Hara Hotaru, the substitute Freshman Representative filling in for Ishimaru--_ ”

Watabe groans. “Great, now there’s two of them.”

Hotaru gapes. “That’s amazing!”

“No, it’s annoying,” Watabe says.

“Neither, it’s work,” the new girl says in her normal voice. “Hi, I’m Kinoshita Yuuka. You probably don’t recog--”

“Oh my god, I had no idea you go to Hope’s Peak! That’s great! My little brother loves _Pasukrita_ so much! Wait, let me get my phone to record--can you do Keychain’s voice for him, just saying hello or something?”

“Not if you value your life,” Kinoshita says.

“--Oh. Sorry. Thank you.”

“Friendly Reminder from a voice actor, Hara-chan. If you don’t recognize us on sight you don’t get to pretend we’re really superstars.”

“Oh come on, Yuuka-chan,” Pak says, “like you said, she’s new. Cut her a break!”

Kinoshita sulks and drops her bag at her lectern, next to Pak’s. “Yeah, she’s new. That’s why I’m telling her what’s what.”

Before Pak can quite respond to that, and before Hotaru can apologize--she had no idea voice actors were so touchy!--the double doors slam open and someone shouts, “Let’s get this party _started!_ ”

“Late,” Shibata drones.

“It don’t start ‘til I walk in, sweetheart!” A large boy with headphones and an unbuttoned shirt swings up to his lectern, chains jingling in his pockets, making somewhat...weird and punctuated gestures with his hands. “And it’s been brought, so hit the floor.”

“Say that where our fearless leader can hear you,” Watabe says.

“What, he ain’t here? Pfft.”

Oniniwa laughs, as pompous as before. “Looks like he’s the one who says when the party starts, Yamashiro.”

“Nah, he’ll just roll in, roll out, roll on. Won’t he, bro?”

No one can blame Hotaru for not noticing that Yamashiro didn’t come in alone. But the boy at the lectern next to his holds up a tablet with _Word_ scribbled on it and a flashing gif of a cursor finger pointing upward. He’s skinny and angular and has a cute face--cuter than Yamashiro’s, Hotaru thinks--with big expressive eyes.

Yamashiro leans like he’s going to cross his arms, but the hand gestures don’t stop. “What my man said.”

Nakagawa smiles, and starts making similar gestures as she speaks, turned toward Yamashiro and--well, Hotaru doesn’t know his name or Talent yet, though she kind of wants to now. “It is not like Murasame-san to be late,” Nakagawa says, “and not like Igija-san either.” They keep gossiping, and the gestures look weirder on Nakagawa than they do on Yamashiro--oh! Hotaru gets it.

She quickly types on her phone, in what would be a text to her mom if she intended to send it, _Hi! I’m Hara Hotaru, the substitute Freshman Representative,_ and all the rest--this way, it won’t bother Watabe and the others, and he’ll be able to know without having someone translate. She passes her phone across the empty lectern into the boy’s hands, and he reads it and smiles, then brings up another image on his tablet.

_Hey there. I’m Magou Mamoru. You guessed it, I’m deaf, but I can read lips okay so don’t trouble yourself too much. Just try to face me when you talk. If I can’t keep up, get Luke or Setsuka to help you._ Before she can ask who Luke and Setsuka are again, he whips out a pair of drumsticks and points to Yamashiro and Nakagawa. With one more tap, be brings up another gif, this one of a man with thick facial hair applauding enthusiastically, then hands her back her phone. There’s a little ^_^ in her textbox where there wasn’t one before, and Hotaru’s heart flutters.

“--and for all we know they’ve cancelled the meeting so let’s just go,” Kinoshita says, rounding out the argument that Hotaru just missed.

“Do we even have anything important to discuss today?” Ono asks.

Shibata rolls her eyes. “Do we ever?”

“Certainly we do!” Nakagawa says, still signing. “And even if we don’t today, we can still make the most of the afternoon.”

“I’d be making more in the labs,” Ono says.

“Seconded,” Kikuchi says, raising one soot-streaked hand.

Oniniwa laughs. “And clearly Sawada needs the practice, _doesn’t he?_ ”

“About as much as you need _experience_.” Sawada withdraws an arrow and taps the tip. Hotaru blushes, whether he means for the gesture to be--well. Anything, or not.

“I’ll show you experience, you egotistical rookie!”

“Then come on! Show me what you’ve got!”

“Please, not here!” Nakagawa, stuck between them, puts her hands against the muzzle of Oniniwa’s rifle and the point of Sawada’s drawn arrow. “Honestly, you two!”

“Yeah,” Kinoshita says, “do you have any idea how grossly problematic you sound?”

In unison, Sawada and Oniniwa look sidelong at each other and echo, “Problematic?”

Nakagawa smiles consolingly and fans herself. “This is just the form their love takes, Kinoshita-san. It’s healthy as long as they both know what they’re getting into and don’t hurt anyone else, isn’t that right?”

“You _would_ say that, Miss Super High School Level Mistress.”

A red blush streaks across Nakagawa’s cheeks, so bright that her fan and her stern tone can’t cover it up. “And why is that so heinous?”

A warning beep rings out from Magou’s tablet, and he holds it up for everyone to see: _Chill, guys, it’s none of our business. ^_^;_

“Yeah, and I don’t wanna hear it. Guns fuck up my sick beats,” Yamashiro says. “Only popping I want to hear on my floor’s got locking too, you get me?”

“She can’t dance,” Sawada says, grinning.

Oniniwa cocks her gun at him again. “Someone feels lucky, doesn’t he?”

“Go ahead, shoot him,” Watabe says, examining her manicure and rings again. “That’ll give us something to talk about.”

“No one is shooting anybody!” someone yells from the door. “Sorry we’re late, the Headmaster stopped us on the way up.”

Hotaru turns to the door, relieved to see at least one familiar face. Super High School Level Student Council President Murasame Soushun walks briskly into the circle of lecterns, looking as stressed-out and put-together as Hotaru’s ever seen him. In his wake, a perky-looking redheaded girl carries an armful of books, and her place in the circle turns out to be lectern next to Hotaru’s. She smiles, and opens her mouth to introduce herself, but doesn’t get the chance.

“What did Headmaster Kirigiri want with you?” Pak asks.

“He said he’d be joining us at Monday’s meeting,” Murasame says. “There’s a project he needs our help with as a committee of the whole. I’m afraid I can’t talk about it yet, though. And speaking of that,” he produces a gavel and swings it down toward its plaque on the lectern, “The Hope’s Peak Student Council is now in session. Good afternoon, everyone!”

“Good afternoon,” everyone replies--

Hotaru’s not sure if that cracking sound is the gavel, or her head hitting the lectern rail.

***

Hotaru wakes up at a desk.

No, she wakes up _chained to_ a desk.

It’s okay to panic, right? It’s okay to freak out and try to run even if you can’t, it’s okay to yank on the chains and try to break out and scream for help, it’s okay to twist around until the shackles on your ankles cut in and you can smell the blood--

\--no. Nothing is okay. Nothing is okay at all.

She tries to breathe, tries to look around. She may be chained to a desk but this isn’t a classroom: the concrete floor and walls, the swinging bare bulb overhead, the discarded tablet in the corner, the broken glass bottle, the streaks of red and brown and the trail of dirty footprints, none of this belongs in a classroom, not even at Hope’s Peak. Especially not at Hope’s Peak.

Hotaru fights with her heart the way she does when she runs, tries to slow it down, stop it from pounding all the way up to her ears.

Okay. _Okay._ This is a dream. This is a sick dream. That’s all. A dream. A prank. A game.

She checks the chains: they’re shackled around her wrists and ankles and fixed to the desk, but the desk isn’t fixed to the floor, and neither is the chair. Hotaru pushes the chair away, stands up as straight as she can, drags the desk with her toward the tablet, and keels over so she can wrangle it into her hands and turn it on. The screen boots white, then subsides to a faint pixel glow.

_Welcome,_ it says in cheery crayon scribble, _to the very first School Life of Mutual Killing!_

****


	2. Chapter 2

_Welcome,_ the tablet says in cheery crayon scribble, _to the very first School Life of Mutual Killing!_ A little bear mascot head pops up at the corner of the screen with a cursor and a sign within a sign, _NEXT_. 

Every member of the Student Council who has managed to reach his or her tablet in his or her isolated room presses the bear. Some of their fingers are shaking. Some leave streaks of sweat. Watabe’s fingernail leaves a tiny scratch in the corner of the screen. But everyone presses it. Everyone chooses to go on.

_Rule Number 1: Kill everyone else!_ A helpful crayon sketch illustrates several possible ways to accomplish this. Hotaru, in particular, clicks on the next bear very quickly after that.

_If you don’t, you’ll be killed by someone else! How terrible!_ The illustrations on this page are equally helpful. Hotaru clicks off the page even faster.

_You can always kill yourself! You might even have to. It totally counts unless it happens by accident._ A stick-figure animation demonstrates hara-kiri, spills out scrawls of red crayon blood. _You should probably have a Second in case you do it wrong though. Don’t worry, your classmates can help you!_ She can’t click the next bear fast enough.

_Rule Number 2: If you want to know where one of your councilmates is, check this handy map!_ The screen scrolls to a 3D map with fifteen labeled points of light divided between four floors, one to a room. At first glance, there are only two names that Hotaru doesn’t recognize: Igija Nanae and Kamukura Izuru. But what’s the school founder doing here? He’s been dead for at least thirty years. 

_Don’t lose or break your tablet unless you really have to. We don’t have an infinite budget!_ The subsequent helpful illustration is even more graphic and disturbing than the rest and Hotaru nearly drops the tablet right then.

_Rule Number 3: No calling for help. You don’t have phones anyway._ Hotaru can’t check her pockets for hers without dropping the tablet or the tottering desk, and her school bag is gone, but a whole lot of uneasy squirming confirms that she is, in fact, without her phone. Probably. Oh no. Oh god. This is real. This is insane but it’s real--

_Rule Number 4: Since this is a beta-test, please don’t hesitate to make any interface complaints out loud. Operators are standing by to make sure that your mutual killing experience is archived so that future instances can be even more despair-inducing for all concerned._ The bear mascot looks excessively friendly on this page.

Hotaru collapses onto the upturned desk and cries.

It’s more like hyperventilating than crying. She’s never been this short of breath in her entire life, and dust clogs her throat. She kicks the desk, and it jerks the heavy chains around her wrists and ankles. She can’t run like this. She’s a sitting duck like this if anyone takes this seriously. She doesn’t _know_ these people and a lot of them don’t seem to like her and any talented person would kill to keep her talent and _someone will take this seriously._

Someone down the hall is screaming.

Out. Out is the most important thing right now. Hotaru struggles to her feet, hefts the desk as best she can. She’d need a hammer or a screwdriver or a key to get out of the cuffs, but getting out of the cuffs doesn’t matter as much as getting the desk out of the cuffs, so she picks it up and bangs it against the wall. Twice. Three times. On the fourth, the wooden surface cracks, and on the fifth it splits, and it takes two more for there to be two pieces of desk, not one. And the first of those halves is harder to break than the second, but the wood splinters and the struts bend and even if Hotaru still has manacles around her wrists and ankles they’re only a little worse than strap weights. Five pounds each limb, maybe. She’s run with worse.

The screaming in the hall has stopped.

Okay. _Okay._ She’s free, now what? Just run, or find the others, or--find the others. There’s no other choice. Some of them said they’d help and if they’re all here she can still find them, and there is no way she’ll just wait here alone.

She checks the tablet, scrapes her fingers along the screen until she gets back to the map. Her name is in the upper left, almost in the corner, but there’s someone in the room next door: Nakagawa. That’s all Hotaru needs to see. Nakagawa’s the perfect person to find right now, she’ll know what has to be done and probably how to do it.

So Hotaru holds on to the tablet and leaves the room with the broken desk behind.

The hall is barely lit at all, all low and broken halogens. Shattered glass display cases line the wall, like the ones test scores and announcements are posted in at a school. There’s not much time to look at them, though, and Hotaru dodges the shards on the floor and follows her tablet to the room at the end of the hall.

It’s a boy’s bathroom. Nakagawa is chained to a urinal. And the smell is ridiculous--even worse with only the light of two tablets to see by.

Hotaru yanks the door shut behind her, and Nakagawa startles so hard the chains rattle. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Hotaru. Um, thank you. I’m alone.”

“Oh thank goodness.” She sags against the pipes, but she must not be able to turn around. “I’ve read what’s on the tablet, it’s in the basin, but I can’t get out. I need you to reach into my bustle and get my lockpicks.”

“--what?”

“I need you to reach into my bustle and get my lockpicks. Now.”

“Um. Okay! Which part is the bustle?”

“It’s the cage over my rear. Please don’t dawdle.”

“Sorry! Thank you.” Hotaru grimaces, feels her way around, and apologizes again before she lifts up Nakagawa’s skirt and pokes around all the ruffles and springs and wires. She pulls out a coil of rope, a roll of electrical tape, a can of mace, and a tube of something that probably isn’t toothpaste before she finds a leatherbound case, like those she’s seen manicurists carry. “Is this it?”

Nakagawa looks over her shoulder. “Yes. Please give it here. Just put the rest back.”

Hotaru does. “Why do you have lockpicks anyway?”

“A Super High School Level Mistress must know how to make a tactful and quick escape,” she says. “Unfortunately, sometimes it isn’t possible.”

“Oh,” Hotaru says.

“But don’t worry. Once I’m out of these, we’ll join up with anyone else who is remotely sane and find our way out of this. I know what you saw before we wound up here wasn’t the most heartening display, but we do all care for each other and no one wants to kill anyone else. Well, except possibly Shibata-chan. But I doubt she’d be able to under these circumstances.” Nakagawa smiles, and fiddles with the lockpicks, and Hotaru can’t help but feel calmer. The senior class really is amazing. “So please, Hara-chan, just put your mind at ease.”

Hotaru relaxes, finishes rearranging Nakagawa’s skirts and leans against the nearest sink. “I’m worried about Magou-senpai.”

Nakagawa laughs. “I understand why you’d say that, but he’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“I do,” Hotaru means to say.

She can’t say anything at all, when someone bursts out of one of the stalls and cracks Nakagawa’s head into the urinal. Once. Twice. Three times. Hotaru can’t even scream.

Nakagawa can, though. And she only manages to get one hand uncuffed to fight back before her attacker wrenches it. Nakagawa is already still and silent, even though her arm is bent into a shape that it will never unwind from again. The drain clogs red and the pipes and porcelain are dripping and Hotaru can’t see, can’t move, can’t breathe.

Except for the dripping of water and blood, the bathroom is silent. Nakagawa sinks to a kneel, almost like she’s about to pray, with one arm still chained to the urinal. Her skirts fluff out around her, and her attacker backs away, flexing his fingers like they need to crack. He--Hotaru’s not sure he’s male, not with all that loose hair, but he’s wearing a male uniform--sighs, like this was nothing, and looks Hotaru up and down.

“Run,” he says.

She does.


	3. Chapter 3

There’s no time to even bother dodging the broken glass. Hotaru just pounds over it, bolts down the hallway, past three doors and into the stairwell and down. There’s more to the floor but there’s nowhere to hide and all she wants is to be as far from _that_ as possible, as far from that monster and Nakagawa’s body and the sound of her blood in the drain. Hotaru smacks her shoulder into the handrail and veers off course, braces her hand on the nearest doorjamb and skids to a stop.

She’s not alone on this floor either.

But alone is worse. Alone means that man will get her. Alone means _dead_. And if there are voices here, that means they’re together, that means someone who wants to help, someone who might have a way out.

She drowns out the hammering of her pulse in her ears, and listens.

“As much as I’d like to do this alone, I can’t. One more time, Chief. One, two, _heave!_ ”

_That sounds so beautiful,_ Hotaru thinks, and then _oh._ It’s Pak. And Murasame, probably, and that’s good. That’s best. That’s even better than finding Nakagawa--

Hotaru turns her head into the stairwell and vomits.

There’s a clatter down the hall, and Pak yells, “Who’s there?”

“I’m sorry,” Hotaru coughs, “thank you, it’s just--it’s Hotaru.”

“Are you hurt?” Murasame asks. “Stay right there, we’ll be just a second.”

“Not hurt, just sick. I--” The horrible taste wells up in her mouth again, but this time she swallows it down. “I saw Nakagawa-senpai die.”

“You mean someone’s taking this seriously?” Pak laughs. It sounds much less comforting than it should. “I told you Mariko-chan would snap.”

“Is Mariko Shibata-senpai? It wasn’t her.” Hotaru comes out of the stairwell into another branching hallway. “Where are you?”

“We’re in the bathroom at the end of the hall. Not for much longer, though,” Before Hotaru can ask why, someone grunts with effort, and something snaps, then echoes out the open bathroom door and straight into Hotaru’s ears. This branch of the hall is just as strewn with rubble and danger as the one upstairs, but more if it is wood and tile than glass, and Hotaru picks her way over it, heads toward the light.

By the time she’s only ten feet from the door, Pak and Murasame are already out. Both of them are still in manacles, though Pak’s chains are shorter than Hotaru’s, and Murasame’s are still linked around a plastic toilet seat. Pak twirls a crowbar in his hands like a baton. “There, see? We’ll find something to melt the rest off. Bet you’re glad to see us, Hotaru-chan!”

“I am,” she says, “I really am, thank you. But I’m not joking, someone killed Nakagawa-senpai right in front of me and told me to run--”

“Who?” Murasame asks.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him at the meeting. But he was wearing a plain boy’s uniform and had really long dark hair and he bashed her skull in against a urinal in the boy’s bathroom--”

“Hey, hey, slow down,” Pak says, still smiling. “If you keep talking as fast as you run, I’ll never keep up!”

Murasame gives Pak a slight sideward glare, then puts his hand on Hotaru’s shoulder. It’s a little awkward with a toilet seat dangling off his manacles, but Hotaru tries to let that slide. “Do you feel safe in the halls?”

“No,” Hotaru says. “Sorry. Thank you.”

“Okay. Pak-kun, do you remember where the office you started in was?”

“Yeah, just down the hall and around the corner, across from the archways.”

“Okay, we’ll go there, get our bearings, and figure out what we’re going to do from here on out. If someone’s really playing this stupid game, we have to be careful, but the more of us we get together in a safe place, the easier it will be to get to the bottom of this.”

Hotaru nods, probably a few more times than she has to but then again she can’t stop shaking.

Murasame smiles, just a little, and then turns ahead. “Pak-kun, take the lead.”

“You got it, Chief!” He salutes with the crowbar, and heads down the hall, taking a winding path through the rubble that Hotaru hadn’t quite noticed. But she follows, and Murasame brings up the rear.

They pass two more open doors on the way. Pak, or someone else, must have already checked these rooms, since both doors are forced open with wedges of broken desk. Then Pak checks around the corner, waves up to say the coast is clear, and leads them into a sideward door that doesn’t seem to fit with the others.

The new room has a torn-up and bloodstained formerly wall-to-wall carpet, and a tottering stack of desks against the far wall; not the student desks that Hotaru was chained to upstairs, but big thick teacher or secretary desks, piled as high as the ceiling bulbs. A smashed analog television dangles on its wires from a strut in the corner and what looks like a coat-rack is stabbed into the floor underneath it. The shadow on the wall looks almost like a scarecrow.

Murasame shuts the door behind them and leans against it. “All right. Is this better, Hara-kun?”

“Yes, thank you,” she says, even if it might not be true.

“Okay. So tell us what you saw.”

“I got free of my desk, and checked the names on the tablet. Nakagawa-senpai was closest, so I ran to her, and she was still chained up. I got her lockpicks out of her skirt so she could get herself free--”

“Aha! I always wondered where she kept those,” Pak says.

Hotaru fights back the tears. “--and she was trying, but this guy showed up out of nowhere and shoved her into the urinal, and he kept on--he bashed her head into it until she stopped moving.”

Pak doesn’t have anything to say to that. It’s the first time she’s seen him look like there isn’t a joke to be made.

Murasame looks down, but looks up too slowly for it to be a nod. “Are you sure she’s dead?”

“He broke her arm and she didn’t scream,” Hotaru says.

“But you’re not sure?”

“And there was a lot of blood. A lot. All over the urinal and the wall and her clothes--”

“What about the tablet?” Pak asks. “You said her name was on the tablet.”

“Everyone’s is,” Hotaru says. “Or was, I guess. On the map, That’s how I knew to look for her.”

Pak lights up his tablet, scrolls through it and checks. “She’s. Um. She’s not on the map anymore.”

Murasame holds out his hand for the tablet.

“What about yours?”

“We left it back in the bathroom, remember? I don’t think it’ll work anymore anyway.”

Hotaru can’t help asking, “What happened?”

“I cracked it against the toilet when I was trying to get out, and the screen went black.”

Pak hands his over, and Hotaru turns hers on too. Strange as it sounds, the extra light is comforting, even if looking at the map itself isn’t. While Murasame confirms that Nakagawa’s name isn’t anywhere to be found, Hotaru counts the others. “Um, sorry. Weren’t there fifteen of us?”

“Fourteen, on the council,” Murasame corrects.

“But there were fifteen names at the beginning. I remember because there were two I didn’t know.”

“How many are there now?” Pak asks.

Hotaru gulps, and she and Murasame say at the same time, “Twelve.”

“ _Twelve?_ Who’s missing?”

“Nakagawa,” Murasame reads off, “and I can’t find Yamashiro...or Nanae. She’s not on here.” Cold panic washes down his face, like the light of the tablet is sucking the color out of his skin. “Hara-kun, are you sure it isn’t just that Nakagawa’s tablet is broken?”

Hotaru shakes her head. “It can’t be. You just said yours is, and you’re here. Your light’s in the same room as mine and Pak-senpai’s, right here. If it were coming from the tablets at all it would be back in the bathroom.”

Murasame hands the tablet back to Pak and charges for the door. “Pak-kun, do you remember where Nanae’s light was at the start?”

“I think so. On the same floor as Hotaru-chan’s, in the opposite corner.”

“We have to find her.”

“Not if her light’s out,” Hotaru says.

“No, that’s exactly why,” Pak says. “We have to know _why_ the light’s out.”

Murasame is already opening the door. “We just have to find her.”

Hotaru follows. They don’t give her a choice. Well, they do, but she doesn’t want to be alone, and that’s the other option. And they go, if not slow, much more slowly than Hotaru wants to. Everything in her wants to run, even the parts that also want to curl up and cry.

Pak keeps a close eye on the tablet and navigates: “Looks like the hall we’re on now is the bottom part of the map frame, so I’ll think of that as south for now. You both were in the northwest corners of your screens, so if Nanae-chan was opposite you she’d be in the southeast. Did you come up or down to get to us, Hotaru-chan?”

“Down,” she says. “Down one floor.”

“Was there a way up?”

“No. At least not in the stairwell I used.”

“So if there’s a stair on this side too, we’ll take it. It looks like the floors are basically symmetrical, so there must be--yep, there!”

Ahead of them, Murasame has reached a stairwell, and stopped cold. “I found Yamashiro-kun,” he says, and it’s not a good thing at all.

Even if she’s only known him for a few minutes, Hotaru knows that Yamashiro shouldn’t be silent.

“You might not want to see this,” Murasame says.

Pak grimaces. “Looks like we have to, whether we want to or not.”

There’s no blood. There doesn’t have to be. Hotaru takes a deep breath and steels herself to look, but that’s still not enough to keep her stomach from churning at the sight: Yamashiro is gaping like a fish, draped backward over the central rail of the staircase half a floor higher, chained in place with his own necklaces. They bite into his neck, leave raised red welts. His face is swollen and drooling, and his eyes bug out like one more push and they’ll tumble out of his skull.

Pak whispers, and for the first time Hotaru can’t understand him.

But Murasame snaps, tears up the stairs and yells, “Nanae! _Nanae!_ ” and it’s chase him or stay here to die and Hotaru runs after him, catches up just as he forces open another door, in another corner, on another body.

This time, there’s blood. Puddles of it, spreading along a linoleum floor and all the way out to the hall, from a body crushed under a toppled refrigerator. Her head and her hands and part of one arm are all that held together. Everything else is pulverized, like roadkill. Everything else is red, and tangled, and wet.

Hotaru won’t look anymore. She won’t. She shouldn’t have to, she _doesn’t_ have to, and she turns away and collapses against the wall and covers her eyes. She isn’t here. This isn’t real. She’ll run, and leave this all behind as soon as she can get her legs under her again. Once she can feel her legs again. Once she can breathe again.

“Chief,” Pak starts, and doesn’t finish, and Hotaru doesn’t even open her eyes to see why. She can guess why. There’s nothing to say.

Hotaru wants to go home.

“Chief,” Pak says again, and his voice isn’t as stable as it was. “Another two lights have gone out.”

“This is no time to be poetic,” Murasame says.

“No, I mean on the map. We were twelve.” Pak gulps. It echoes. “Now we’re ten.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Ten,” Murasame repeats.

“Ten,” Pak says again, and doesn’t make a joke. “Kikuchi’s gone too. But it’s just her. Maybe there were only fourteen to begin with.”

Hotaru still hasn’t opened her eyes. It doesn’t matter. She still won’t be able to see if she does, not with how many tears she thinks she’s trapped on the other side of her eyelids. “There weren’t,” she says, but her voice is so small that she almost can’t hear it, let alone Pak or Murasame.

“In that case,” Murasame starts, then tries “whatever,” but that doesn’t work either, and the sobs that break his voice force the tears out of Hotaru’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter now. We’ll go with the names on the map. We have to get everyone together. We have to. Then we can worry. Then we can mourn.”

“But Chief--”

“I know, Pak! You don’t think I know? I meant what I said. Man the tablet, okay?”

“...You got it.”

_This is what it means to be a Super High School Level Student Council President,_ Hotaru thinks. This is what it means to put the class first. She opens her eyes, but being brave is much easier said than done, and she can’t even say it. She just lets the tears out, listens, breathes, clutches the tablet in her hands and tries not to look anywhere at all.

“Can you stand, Hotaru-chan?” A hand crosses into the blur of Hotaru’s vision--Pak’s, it turns out--and she takes it. Somehow, he’s holding both the crowbar and the tablet in the other. She takes his hand, and braces herself on the wall for the whole way up to her feet, and as soon as she can turn away from the carnage in Igija’s room she does. It means yanking Pak into the hall with her, but she’s only a little sorry.

She apologizes for that anyway.

“No worries. I know how you feel, you know?” He smiles. “Everything’s going to be fine, Hotaru-chan.”

“I want to believe you.”

“Ha, I know. Just don’t knock us, all right? Trust me, some of us have been through worse.”

Before she can ask what, or who, or what could possibly be worse than this, Murasame comes into the hall as well. Igija’s blood is on his hand--he must have shut her eyes, or checked for a pulse, or something--and he’s still shackled to the toilet seat but it no longer seems so ridiculous. “Okay. Pak, is there anyone else on this floor?”

Pak checks. “No, Chief.”

Murasame grits his teeth. “Okay. And there aren’t any floors higher than this one?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Hara-kun?”

“...Same. Sorry.”

“Then who’s closest, and where?”

Pak answers, “I don’t know which floor is nearest us, but there’s a cluster of people in--”

Someone screams for help, shrill and thin, and it rings through the entire floor.

“Settchan,” Pak says, like he can’t believe it.

Murasame shakes Hotaru’s shoulder, hard. “I thought you said Nakagawa was dead!”

“She is!”

“Then who--”

Another scream-- _Someone! Anyone!_ \--blasts out from the same place, in a lower, harder voice.

“--was that Kikuchi-kun?”

“It can’t be, she’s gone too!”

“But what if--”

_“Damn it, someone! Help! Please! No, please don’t, please, no--”_

It hits Hotaru, Pak, and Murasame at the same time, but Hotaru’s the one to say it. “Kinoshita-senpai.” Of course she’d think no one would help her under her real voice.

Murasame barges out the door, and Pak shouts after him, “She’s in the central room! The big one! It looks like double-doors on the map!--Wait, it’s hard to tell if it’s that floor or this one--”

It’s too late. Once she hears the first part, Hotaru bolts after Murasame and overtakes him easily, gets to the first double-doors she sees downstairs and shoves them open.

The room is one of the strangest Hotaru’s ever seen. All the walls and the floor are painted a light-sucking black, and piles of toppled metal folding chairs fill the lower parts of the floor. A raised dais, about two feet off the ground, is completely bare in the back of the room, with door-sized black curtains to either side. The ceiling is mostly beams and metal struts, and that’s what tells Hotaru that this is some kind of theater or auditorium: dozens of thick stagelights dangle out of the darkness, some precariously on wires, others tight and awkwardly angled on their vises.

And Kinoshita dangles, just as awkwardly, as the long-haired man slits her throat. Her last scream morphs into something like the sound of boiling water hitting a hot stove, then stops completely.

The long-haired man lets out something like a sigh, and Kinoshita’s body jerks violently as he drops her out of the rafters. She stops struggling the moment after she drops, and her eyes shine as white as the knife.

Murasame curses. Hotaru just stares, a scream frozen in her throat, as the longhaired man raises his knife again, looking into her eyes through the dark.

Behind them, Pak shouts, and a gunshot thrills the air. Even if Hotaru doesn’t understand, she turns to run, it’s all she can do, all she knows to do--

\--just as a lighting instrument comes crashing down beside her.

Hotaru is used to people falling behind. It doesn’t usually happen literally. Murasame hits the floor, but not like he’s covering his head. Hotaru skids to a stop, rounds back to him, just as Pak bursts in. No. _No, none of this is okay--_

“Run, shit, run, I told you to run, not duck!” Pak yells, but Murasame doesn’t seem to hear him, doesn’t move at all.

“Either’s good by me!” Oniniwa shouts. “Just move! _Now!”_

Hotaru doesn’t need to be told twice, and it’s a good thing too. Oniniwa fires two shots, then leaps down from the balcony over Hotaru’s head and lands, rifle at the ready. One more shot, and the beam underneath the long-haired man cracks, and he falls. His shoulder hits the floor first, and he cries out, curls up--but still has the knife tight in his fist, and Kinoshita’s blood is still on it, darkening the edge.

Oniniwa changes out her clip, stalks him in a circle like he’s not down at all. “If he’s still alive, get Murasame out of here,” she says, “I’ll find you later.”

“Got it,” Pak says--and then, simply, “shit!”

The long-haired man isn’t down. He’s the farthest thing from _down_ : he’s _running_ , straight for the curtained wall, as fast as the best sprinters Hotaru’s ever faced on the field.

Oniniwa curses, and fires two more shots before he winds himself in the curtain and disappears. There’s no trail, and when Oniniwa makes amove to chase after him, Pak says, “Wait. I can’t carry the Chief alone. Come with us.”

She nods, tucks some stray strands of one pigtail behind her headset. Her manacles are still clamped on, but the chain is shot through. “Who have you found?”

“It’s just the three of us, sorry,” Hotaru says. “Wait, is Murasame-senpai’s light out?”

“Nope.” She indicates the headset. “I transferred everything from the tablet onto here. We’re four lights now.” She glances behind her at Kinoshita, and grimaces. “Should be five, but I got here as soon as I could. I’ve been trying to trail that asshole since he got Kikuchi.”

“You saw him kill her?”

“Yeah, but we’ve got other things to worry about. We’ve got to get Murasame to Ono. And fast.”

“If he’s still alive,” Pak says.

“He is. They both are.”

“Okay. Where to?”

“Ono’s with Watabe and the idiot directly below us. And if the idiot hasn’t been a _complete_ idiot, he’s got the place fortified.”

“What about just finding an exit?” Hotaru’s hands are shaking. She tightens them into fists, and it doesn’t stop. Stillness is wrong, stillness is like Kinoshita and Murasame and everyone else, and--no. She won’t think about it. She can’t.

“You think I haven’t tried?” Oniniwa rolls her eyes. With one behind the headset, it looks frankly terrifying. “I’ve canvassed three floors already and wasted a clip and a half trying to bust through whatever they’ve done to the windows. And all those archway doors are covered in concrete. Can we talk about this _later_?”

“Okay,” Hotaru says, “sorry, thank you,” and for the first time wonders if she’ll be saying that for the rest of her life.

“Good. Now let’s go, before that Kamiyama-wannabe comes back. You two take Murasame, I’ll cover you. Down the stairwell on your right.”

Pak throws one of Murasame’s arms over his shoulder, and Hotaru ducks under his other one to hold him up between them. There’s not enough blood to drip, but Hotaru can smell it on him, unless the blood is really just everywhere now. His hair sticks to Hotaru’s ear and cheek, and she fights down the urge to vomit again.

The stairwell isn’t far, and they take it as quickly as they can, but that’s not quick at all. Hotaru still has time to look around, and sure enough the doors beyond the archways, all of them, are filled in with sidewalk concrete, with little craters from where Oniniwa must have tried to bust out. 

“Less looking, more walking,” Oniniwa says. “I can look. You can walk.”

“Fine, fine,” Pak says, and smiles. It looks more strained than usual.

Hotaru and Pak finally reach the stairs, and ease Murasame down to a sitting position. His breathing is ragged and wrong, but it’s _there_ and that’s more important, and a belch or a groan escapes him when Hotaru nudges him down to the next step.

“Hello?” someone calls, weakly, back the way they came--no, in the other long hallway opposite the stairs they came down from the higher floor. “Is someone there?”

Pak perks up. “Kikuchi-chan?”

Oniniwa turns, lowers her rifle. “I thought you were out.”

“He knocked me out,” she says, “can’t move that well.”

“We’ll be right there.” Pak nods at Hotaru, asks her, “Can you steady Chief on the way down? Just keep him along the wall, it’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“You’re doing great.” His smile is brighter than it was before, almost like it was up in the Student council room, and Hotaru might just smile back. But he leaves, tells Oniniwa, “Keep covering,” and then calls over to Kikuchi, “I’m on my way.”

Hotaru manages to get Murasame down another step on her own. It’s slow going, and she thinks she really should be using a stretcher since Murasame is practically dead weight--that’s an awful thought--but it gets easier, and she checks back with Pak, “Pak-senpai, am I doing this--”

Pak reaches the corner, and staggers back with a knife embedded in his chest. The crowbar hits the floor, the tablet a split-second later, and his body last of all.

Hotaru screams, but Oniniwa’s gunshots drown it out, and all that she hits is a long lock of hair as the killer turns away. Oniniwa races to the end of the hall, ready to run him down--

“Don’t leave me,” Hotaru yells, “don’t leave me, please, I’m sorry. Don’t go after him. You said it, we have to go downstairs, I want to make it downstairs--”

“Fine,” Oniniwa says, turning back. “I can’t see him anyway. That loser’s got to be at least as fast as you.”

Those words unwind and echo in Hotaru’s mind, just like the gunshots. _As fast as you._

_As fast as you._

_But no one in Japan is supposed to be as fast as you. That’s why you’re at Hope’s Peak, isn’t it? There’s no one else like you._

_And soon, there won’t be anyone like you._

***


	5. Chapter 5

“He’s out,” Oniniwa says, and rips the knife out of Pak’s chest. She wipes the blood off on her skirt, the clasps the knife between her hands, bows her head, just one moment of prayer. Then she brings it over to Hotaru, offers it hilt-first.

“No thank you,” Hotaru says. She’d wave her hands if it didn’t mean letting go of Murasame’s body.

Oniniwa rolls her eyes. “You can’t just run from everything. Well, maybe _you_ can. Never mind.”

Hotaru wrangles Murasame down another step. A couple more and she’ll have to guide him around the corner somehow. His breathing’s even shallower and weaker than before. If Ono can’t help him--no. Hotaru doesn’t want to think about that. She doesn’t want to think about any of this.

Well, she has to.

Once she’s around the corner, Oniniwa comes down half the flight of stairs and helps her pull Murasame to his feet. “It would have been easier on the inside corner,” Oniniwa says.

“Sorry.”

“Whatever, you didn’t know.”

“How do you know all this?”

The glare Oniniwa shoots her could wither a pine. “Less talking, more walking.”

“Okay. Sorry. Thank you.”

The rest of the way down isn’t any easier, but faster regardless. Oniniwa tells her the coast is clear on the very last step, and once they’re both on the floor it’s easier to shamble along. Oniniwa takes the lead. The map stands out clear on her headset, a haloed glow down the dark hallway. This one is even darker than the ones upstairs, but the floor is less littered and the walls bare except for thick paint graffiti. It looks almost like an old underground Metro station, without the hope of tracks.

A faint light creeps under one set of double-doors, deep down the hall. Oniniwa gets there first, kicks the door instead of knocking. It doesn’t budge. “I know you’re in there, you jerk!” she shouts. “I’ve got Murasame and the freshman with me and we need Ono, stat!”

No one answers.

“Come on, idiot, open up!” She kicks the door again, butts her rifle against it. The doors shudder, but don’t open. “No, no, that’s not allowed--”

“What’s wrong?”

“All their lights went out at once.” Oniniwa hammers the door again. “Damn it, idiot, come on! Open up! You’re not allowed to die unless I kill you, you hear me! You can’t be--” She hits the door so hard the hinges rattle. “Damn it! Mitsuo! You son of a bitch, you can’t be dead--”

A dull thud presses back from the other side of the doors, and someone laughs deeply. “Made you say it.”

Even in the near-darkness, the red surge up Oniniwa’s cheeks is plainly visible. Hotaru almost wants to laugh. Almost. 

“You jerk,” Oniniwa growls. Once the doors are open enough for her to fit through, she launches herself at Sawada, punches him in the chest, the shoulder, the jaw. He grabs her and kisses her soundly--which also takes care of holding the door open--and Hotaru can see from here that he’s not wearing manacles.

“Um,” Hotaru says, “can we get Murasame-senpai inside? Thank you.”

“I’ve got him,” Ono says, coming into view, then into the hall. He stoops to heft up Murasame, and since he’s taller and stronger than Hotaru it’s a relief for her to only be supporting him on his way in. “You’re lucky he isn’t paralyzed. You couldn’t brace his neck? What happened?”

“There’s someone who isn’t on the Student Council,” Hotaru says. “He’s going around killing everybody.”

“The one with the founder’s name?” Watabe is sitting on top of a stack of wooden beams, working with a toolkit of some kind to get her manacles off the rest of the way. Aside from the sawdust in her hair, she looks just as elegant and composed as she did up in the Council room, and Hotaru’s more relieved at that than she has been at anything else so far. Someone’s calm. Someone’s together. Someone’s able to help, really help.

Then again, she thought the same about Nakagawa and Murasame.

“Go ahead,” Watabe calls over Hotaru’s shoulder, not waiting for an answer. “Keep making out with the door open. I’m sure Kamukura gets off on that too.”

Sawada and Oniniwa stop long enough to shut the doors, bar them in place with two long metal poles, and stack a few more wooden planks in front of it for good measure. “Can’t fault me for being glad she’s alive.”

“How did you get your lights off?” Oniniwa asks.

Watabe demonstrates, flourishing a screwdriver and her rings. “Who else do you think sells these?”

Oniniwa scoffs. “Well that’s a stroke of luck.”

Hotaru blinks. “I thought you said you were a treasurer.”

“Scroll back in your memory to when I said I was a Super High School Level Treasurer. You won’t find it.”

“So what are you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“She’s an arms dealer,” Oniniwa says. “You sold these?”

“Yes, and I’d trace the shipment if any of these tablets could get online. But no, I don’t know how they got to Hope’s Peak. They weren’t in anything _I’ve_ funneled in, at least.”

Oniniwa tsks. “Was it the short stack?”

“Probably, but I can’t confirm that unless he’s here. I never thought I’d want to see his baby face.”

“That makes two of us.”

Sawada, briefly, looks a little jealous, but that might just be the darkness.

“That little punk gets away with murder,” Oniniwa goes on. “Literally.”

Hotaru shudders. “So you think you know who’s behind this?”

“I have more of a clue than you do, that’s for sure.” Watabe comes down from her perch, tools out, and goes to work on Hotaru’s manacles without waiting for permission. “But no. I don’t know. We can’t know.”

Over on the other side of the room--which is a much bigger room than any of the classrooms or offices Hotaru’s seen so far, almost as big as the black room upstairs with the lights--Ono has laid Murasame out on a large work table with a chipped and paint-streaked surface. Ono hisses through his teeth, loud enough that it stings the room like a shot. “I can stabilize him, but he needs more than I have here.”

“More what? Hotaru asks.

“Time. Specialized skill. Everything.” Ono rolls up the sleeves of his lab coat. “I never thought I’d want Matsuda here. What hit Murasame, a brick?”

“A big light, like in a stadium.” Hotaru winces just remembering it, and Watabe finishes undoing her manacles, so Hotaru tells this to her too. “That man--Kamukura--just cut a wire. That’s all it took. He didn’t even think about it.”

“So it looks like we need a real strategy to deal with him,” Sawada says, coming away from the wall with Oniniwa. “What kind of person would take this seriously?”

“You’d be surprised,” Watabe says. “Is Hara-kun’s light off on the map?”

Oniniwa nods. “So the signal comes from the cuffs.”

“They measure for a pulse. If your heart stops, there’s nothing for them to read, but taking them off is just as effective.”

“Which means that unless you saw the corpse, that person might still be in the game,” Oniniwa says. “That explains why we can’t track that psycho.”

“How did he get his cuffs off?”

“Who cares? All that matters is he did.”

“No,” Hotaru says. “How does matter. Sorry. He could have used Nakagawa-senpai’s lockpicks, or cut them off somehow else, or anything.”

“No, it _doesn’t_ matter how,” Ono says from the worktable. He’s got Murasame strapped down now, with bungee cords and a folded tarp under his head to keep it level. “They’re off, and he’s alive until proven otherwise. We have to operate under the assumption that he could break in here and kill us any second.”

Oniniwa drags over a crate and sits on it so that Watabe can go to work on her cuffs, which Watabe does without being asked. Hotaru can’t help blushing, in spite of everything else: when it needs to be, Student Council is like a well-oiled machine, even without Murasame, even with so many gone.

“So who can we confirm is dead?” Watabe asks.

“Kinoshita,” Oniniwa counts off with her free hand, “and Pak--Hotaru and I both saw those happen. I walked in right after he got Kikuchi but apparently that’s bunk, since either he’s got her voice in a box or he’s holding her hostage. Who else?”

“I saw Nakagawa-senpai die,” Hotaru says, just gets it out of the way as quickly as she can, “and we found Yamashiro-senpai and...they said her name was Nanae? Nanae-senpai.”

“Igija,” Oniniwa says. “Her last name is Igija. So now the only lights on my set are Shibata and Magou.” She cocks her head over her shoulder toward Sawada. “So, jerk, what do you think? Do we go after them, or do we fortify this place?”

“Why not both? Now that the two of us are here, we can split off.”

“Count me out,” Watabe says. “I am not going out there unless I know there’s an exit.”

“There is _one,_ ” Ono says.

“How about you shut up before you start sounding like Shibata?”

“How about you let me work in peace so I can try to save someone’s life?”

“I,” Hotaru starts, and then has to start again. “Sorry. I want to save Magou-senpai. And Shibata-senpai shouldn’t have to die like this. No one should. But I don’t know if I can go out there again. Definitely not alone.”

“You don’t have to,” Sawada says. “No one is going out there alone, especially if we’re off the radar now. But I want to go too. If they _can_ be saved, they _will_ be saved. And if we do this right, they can.”

“So that’s settled,” Oniniwa says. “I’ll hold down the fort, and you two do a quick loop. Magou and Shibata are both on the same floor and I’m guessing it’s a basement. Who’s got a tablet?”

“Doesn’t matter, I can read the backward readout on your headset just fine.” Sawada grins, and taps his cheek under one eye, like he’s reminding her. “Where do you think the stairwell is?”

“Assuming the top of the map is north, it’s the central west door. That’s the only place the two floors line up.”

“Got it.”

“You’re all insane,” Watabe says.

Sawada grins. “What can I say? Love makes you crazy.”

Oniniwa pouts and elbows him in whatever part she can reach the way she’s sitting, which turns out to be his thigh. “Idiot. Don’t die.”

“I know. I’m not allowed to unless it’s you.” He tugs one of her pigtails, but she grabs his hand before he can pull it back, drags it down and kisses his thumb. For all that she’s seen them making out, Hotaru can’t help looking away after that. There’s just something about the gesture that seems like it’s not for her eyes. “That goes for you too,” Sawada says quietly, and just as much not for Hotaru.

“Jerk.”

“Vixen.”

“Pervert.”

“Why don’t you just have sex right here,” Watabe says.

“After we survive,” Sawada says, standing. He takes an arrow out of the utility quiver on his back, unslings his bow, and offers Hotaru a smile on the way out. “Are you coming? If something happens to me out there, I need you to run back here and warn the others. Can you do that?”

_Yes,_ Hotaru thinks, _it’s all I can ever do_ , but the only part she says is “Yes. Thank you.”

***


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, everyone! I took a year off from inducing despair to get married. I will ideally finish this fic -- only two and a half chapters to go -- in the next several weeks.

Sure enough, the stairwell is where Oniniwa said it would be, nestled in a corner out of reach of the hanging lights. The map on her headset didn’t say anything about a barricade of splintered beams and broken lamps and a ratty purple zebra-striped sofa blocking the way, but Sawada just laughs and kicks his way through the rubble like it’s nothing. Hotaru helps the best she can without being asked, since Sawada doesn’t seem too concerned about setting a watch or anything.

Better to be fast now and sweat the small stuff later, Hotaru thinks. It’s one of the most comforting thoughts she’s had since before she woke up at that desk.

Once enough of the barricade is down, Sawada climbs over the remains and presses his hands against the door like he’s searching for something. “Huh,” he says, “someone really doesn’t like Mamoru and Shiba-chan.”

“Sorry?”

“These things weren’t stacked to keep us out: they were here to hold whoever’s down there in. The door opens toward us. ”

“I guess that makes sense. But why would the way the door opens matter?”

Sawada laughs. The echo is winding and unwelcome, but the sound itself is strangely nice. Hotaru can see why Oniniwa likes him so much, even if they try to kill each other a lot. “Doors are weird, that’s all.”

“Um, how are doors weird?”

“I’m not used to them. The monastery I grew up in was all traditional architecture. Even when I went to archery competitions they were all outside so I didn’t really have _doors_ until I came to Hope’s Peak. Just shoji. I called doors ‘lids’ by mistake my first day here.” Before Hotaru can even process that statement, Sawada reaches up and pries the top hinge off the door, then stoops to do the same to the bottom. “And I don’t like being shut in.”

“I get that,” Hotaru says, quietly enough that it doesn’t echo at all. “Thank you. And for this, too.”

“This?”

“Wanting to find Magou-senpai.”

Sawada laughs again. “It’s like I said in there. If they can be saved, they will be saved.”

“But what about the rest of us?”

“They’ve got Hazuki,” he says. “They’ll be fine. We’ve both done this before.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Well,” he says, venturing into the dark stairwell, an arrow on the string, “not this _exactly_. But we had a really interesting Golden Week last year before we hooked up.” In the last trace of light, Hotaru distinctly sees his cheeks tinge pink. “Right before we hooked up.”

However much Hotaru wants to know, now is definitely not the time to ask.

After a few more steps down, the stairwell is pitch black. Hotaru holds on to the banister and takes the stairs as slowly as she’s ever taken them, but Sawada’s steps are as easy as anything. He doesn’t even hug the wall, just leads the way like he knows exactly where to put his foot next, and takes the turn at the corner before Hotaru even notices there is one.

“Um, sorry, Sawada-senpai--”

“Ha. Whoops, okay. I’ll slow down.”

“How can you see down here?”

“Super High School Level Kyuudoka, remember? I couldn’t really call myself that without super eyesight.”

“You can _see in the dark_?”

His hair flicks against Hotaru’s wrist: he must have turned around, probably to smile. “Is it that weird?”

“Yes. Um. Sorry. Thank you.”

“Hey, I should be saying I’m sorry, not you. It’s fine. Do you need time for your eyes to adjust?”

“A little.”

“Okay, but we’ve got to hurry. For now I’ll keep count of the steps and tell you when to turn. You can keep up if I do that, I know it.”

She nods. He can probably see that. That’s more freaky than she wants to deal with right now, but she doesn’t have much of a choice, so she just steps when he tells her to.

They make it down to the basement, and Hotaru’s eyes don’t adjust much at all. She can make out dense piles of rubble along the walls, and the stink of garbage is especially bad when there’s nothing to be seen, but it’s the most uncomfortable she’s been since she woke up chained to a desk and _that’s saying something._ But Sawada is courteous and doesn’t go around any corner without warning her first, doesn’t completely disappear into the dark.

“So what’s the plan?” she whispers, though his hearing probably isn’t as amazing as his eyesight. “Do we call out to them? Magou-senpai--”

“Won’t hear that, but don’t worry. Don’t call out to him. If I’m keeping watch, I need you to knock on the walls for me. Can you do that?”

“What?”

“Just knock on the wall. This is the pattern. It’s got three steps, okay? Go. Scrape, tap tap, scrape--”

Hotaru reaches out and raps on the nearest wall with her right fist, _scrape, tap tap, scrape._

“Now scrape, tap tap, scrape, tap.”

She does that one too.

“And last, scrape, tap, scrape scrape, tap.”

And that one too. For a long moment, nothing happens, and Hotaru can’t help shuddering to think this has done nothing at all.

Then the floor shakes, just a little. It feels like the rhythm of a rock song.

Sawada laughs, and stamps his foot, _shave and a haircut_.

The floor rumbles back, _two bits_.

“He’s fine,” Sawada says. “He’ll tell us where we have to go to meet him halfway.”

Hotaru gapes. “That’s _amazing_.”

“Just like a Super High School Level Drummer,” Sawada says. He might be grinning, not that Hotaru can see. “Keep knocking on the wall. You don’t have to use Kana Code, just keep a steady beat.”

“That was Kana Code?”

“You got it. He can feel where we are.”

It really is amazing. The seniors all know so much, and Magou-senpai is a marvel. Hotaru leans on the wall as she knocks, and as they walk it takes a moment to realize that she’s beating something like the pounding of her heart. But that’s okay, maybe -- she can feel his response, mixing in with the beat.

_Oh._

Her cheeks heat up.

She hopes Sawada doesn’t look back because he can probably see it.

Her eyes must be adjusting a little too, since she can see the fork in the hallway before Sawada points it out to her. He glances over his shoulder, bow still drawn. “Wait. I hear something else.”

Hotaru listens for a moment. It’s a scraping, metallic sound, like a whimpering pipe. Twice. Three times, the same distance apart. “Shibata-senpai?”

“Probably.”

“Should I tell Magou-senpai to wait?”

“Yeah.” He gives her the signal to tap, and Magou’s rapping responds with a simple _scrape, tap tap tap tap, scrape_. Sawada listens into the dark, leans around the corner. “Man, I really hope she didn’t hulk out.”

“Hulk out?”

“Kidding, kidding. It’s just a joke we all have. I don’t think she actually hulks out. I just think she’s gonna snap and kill everyone in the world someday.”

“O...kay,” Hotaru says. “Sorry. Thank you.”

“Shiba-chan?” he calls into the dark. “Shiba-chan, is that you?”

“Don’t come any closer!” she yells, from somewhere down the left hall.

“Well, that was easy,” Sawada says, probably mostly to Hotaru. But he calls out to Shibata again, “But it’s just us! Mitsuo and the freshman.”

“Like I care,” Shibata says. It echoes off the walls. Does Magou hear it too? “I said don’t come any closer. I’m getting out of this alive.”

“But that’s what we’re here for!” Hotaru yells, and then adds, “Sorry.”

“It’s safer my way. Just get what you came for and go fight amongst yourselves.”

Sawada laughs, which makes Hotaru shudder, but he doesn’t seem to care. Or notice. “Sorry, Shiba-chan. You’re part of what we came for.”

“Well I’ll have no part of it. I’m safe where I am.”

“You’re not safe, that’s the whole point!”

“Well, if I’m not safe, that means you’re dangerous. If you want to lure me out and kill me, you’ve got another thing coming. If you want me, you’ll have to come and get me yourself.”

“You’ve got it all wrong! It’s not us, it’s Kamukura.”

“The founder’s been dead for years. Tell me another one if you expect me to believe you.”

Hotaru inches along the wall to touch Sawada’s shoulder, impolite as that is. And at least she thinks it’s his shoulder. He really is tall, wow. “Sawada-senpai, if she doesn’t want us to get her, we shouldn’t get her.”

“No. I said it upstairs, if they can be saved, they will be saved.”

“But Magou-senpai will --”

“Mamoru-kun will be fine. He can protect himself.” Sawada laughs at the pun, which Hotaru doesn’t find funny at all right now.

“But he wants us to find him and she doesn’t!”

“I don’t leave people alone in the dark.”

_But that’s where I am,_ Hotaru thinks, _that’s where we all are_ , but she doesn’t dare say. Wait. Maybe she can say it. Maybe she should.

She gets as far as the “But --” before this entire dark world explodes.

The floor quakes. Gunshots clang upstairs. Someone else is running, someone else’s feet are hammering the floor, and a sound like an enormous knife slices through the air. Sawada whips around, bow and arrow at the ready on something Hotaru can’t see.

“Stop right there!” he yells.

Something -- someone -- does.

He’s over Hotaru’s shoulder, close enough that she can hear him breathe. But not close enough to see. Not here.

Every sound stops, except the pounding of the floor. It’s Magou, Hotaru thinks, it has to be. Everyone else is silent. Hotaru holds her breath. She’s not the only one.

Why did Kamukura stop? He killed everyone so quickly before. He didn’t stop when they walked in on him slitting Kinoshita’s throat. He didn’t give Pak enough time to scream. He can’t think he’s outmatched here, this can’t be the kind of standoff from the movies unless there’s something more at stake.

And how the hell did he get down here so fast anyway?

“There you are,” Sawada says, like he’s in one of those films after all. “You think I can’t put one right between your eyes like this?”

“Go ahead,” Kamukura says. He’s almost monotone, maybe even tired, but his soft, breathy voice makes Hotaru’s skin crawl. “That’ll make this easier.”

It’s a game of Chicken. They’re playing _Chicken_ over Hotaru’s shoulder. That isn’t fair! _And_ it doesn’t make sense! Sawada’s an ace, and Kamukura’s fast, at least as fast as Hotaru. And that shouldn’t even be possible! He shouldn’t be standing here waiting to be shot unless --

\-- unless.

No.

“Sawada-senpai, don’t shoot!” It all makes sense, it makes more sense than any of this, _it makes this all make sense_ , “He wants you to! He wants you to shoot so don’t shoot! Sorry! Just don’t!”

But like everything else that happens in this twisted place, it happens whether Hotaru wants it or not. Kamukura darts forward, close enough that a lock of his hair slaps Hotaru’s cheek. Sawada shoots. Nobody falls. Sawada shoots again, this time in another direction, and a slice like a guillotine rings through the darkness.

Shibata screams, then doesn’t anymore.

“Hotaru, go!” Sawada shouts. “Get Mamoru! Follow the beat! I’ll hold this bastard off.”

She does. It’s easier to run. It’s easier to do as he says than tell him why she shouldn’t, and Magou is just as alone as she is here, and that’s awful -- but she can tell him. She can tell Magou-senpai, and he’ll listen.

So she bolts into the dark, listens for the drumming on the wall. The fight is all air and arrows, she can tune that out, she’s tuned that out before. But the tremors in the floor, those she can follow, those she _has_ to follow even if she can’t see where she’s going.

She crashes into something. Someone.

No, something. Something ankle-high, with cold clean teeth. _Then_ someone.

And then she can’t run anymore.

***

When all of this ridiculousness began, Magou Mamoru was chained to the boiler, locked in the boiler room, and blindfolded. Someone _really_ didn’t want him going anywhere. He didn’t even find the tablet with all of this _School Life of Mutual Killing_ bullshit until fifteen minutes into the game. By the time he got a look at the map, Setsuka, Luke, and Nanae were already wiped off it.

Mamoru spent the next forty-five minutes getting free. The pipes of the boiler were rusted enough that he could break them instead of the much nicer cuffs. By the light of the tablet, he found his way to the boiler room door and wedged it ajar with the rusty pipe. It was still locked and chained from the outside, but there was plenty of crap lying around, and after he managed to use the blindfold to puzzle his way through the rest of the boiler room he found a toolbox, and in it a screwdriver to take the hinges off the door and open it backwards.

He got the feeling he was playing a different game than everyone else.

But that left him able to see more or less what was going on upstairs. He tracked Shibata to the far corner of this same floor, and felt the vibrations of her hardware and machines all over, enough to know what a risk it would be to find his way out alone. He watched, remotely, as Hazuki canvassed the upper three floors and fail to find a way out. He saw that Kamukura bogey pick off the council members who stayed in their starting places one by one, and saw his light disappear at the same time as Kikuchi’s. He tracked Hotaru around as she gathered as many allies as she could and met up with the ones who were convening in the big room upstairs, and knew she’d come for him eventually.

He really hoped she would make it out of this alive.

But no. Shibata’s been rigging traps around the basement, because _Shibata_ , goddamn it, and not even Hotaru is fast enough to dodge them.

She topples into Mamoru’s arms, mouthing apologies all the way down. He drops his tablet, still on, so he can see her face. Her face is fine. It’s her right foot that isn’t. Isn’t _there._ Is cut off at the ankle, in the trap, three feet away, just where the light of the tablet can't reach.

She panics and cries, and Mamoru can’t blame her. He can’t read her lips with her face buried in his chest but that’s not what’s important now. He holds her, presses his hands into her back, lets her know she’s not alone.

Her light has been out on the map for a long time now, but Mamoru can still feel the moment that she dies. Her heart stops, and her tears stop.

But the game hasn’t stopped. Not yet.

***


End file.
